The benefits of StumbleUpon

Recently we started using StumbleUpon to promote our travel blog and it’s been so successful that I’m kicking myself that we didn’t do it earlier.

In the past four weeks we’ve had three times as much traffic as we did in the four weeks prior. StumbleUpon now brings in most of our blog’s traffic and it’s become quite addictive for that very reason.

What is StumbleUpon?

StumbleUpon allows users to search web content via categories such as travel, marketing, camping, and much, much more. You simply type in a topic and articles will be produced for you to read.

It’s perfect if you have a hobby or interest that you want to learn more about regularly. For example, I can type in ‘social media’ into the search box each morning and get a list of articles recently added to StumbleUpon. It saves sifting through Google, because it’s not about looking for something specific – it’s about getting random information on a specific topic.

What are the benefits of StumbleUpon?

More traffic

The most obvious benefit of StumbleUpon is that you’ll immediately see a rise in traffic when you begin adding content from your website. I’m currently in the process of adding all the articles we’ve ever written, and because StumbleUpon limits this number to 10 per day from the same website it’s taking some time.

It’s a pleasant process though – seeing a steady rise in traffic each day has been motivating.

Like all other social media platforms, I ensure I add content from other people’s websites too so that my account doesn’t start looking spammy.

Higher PageRank

By listing your web pages on StumbleUpon, you will help to improve your site’s PageRank. Every link submitted to StumbleUpon counts as a back link and when you have lots of visitors coming to your site via these, your PageRank begins to increase.

The benefit of having a higher PageRank is that your site becomes more visible to search engines, enabling it to be ranked higher and therefore bringing more traffic to your site.

Those who use StumbleUpon decide what makes the cut

StumbleUpon is run by its users. The users add content to the website and influence what posts are popular and what ones aren’t.

They do this by giving articles they read on StumbleUpon either a thumbs up or thumbs down. The more thumbs up your pages get, the more prominent they will appear on StumbleUpon.

It’s like promoting your business by a virtual word-of-mouth system. And with 18 million users, that’s a lot of mouths.

StumbleUpon can be used as a tool of comparison

If you’re not sure what blog post your audience will like more, you can always submit an array to StumbleUpon and see how the public rates them.

It’ll give you an unbiased insight into what kinds of blog posts are popular on your website, helping you to write more targeted content in the future.

It’s easy to find users with similar interests to you

On StumbleUpon you can check out other users’ StumbleDNA which is a fancy term for the colour bar indicated on each person’s StumbleUpon page. This bar shows which interests the users like or Stumble, with their chosen topics indicated via percentages.

For example, if they have Stumbled 10 interests – two on travel, five on business, one on marketing and two on social media, it will be represented in their StumbleDNA as 20%, 50%, 10% and 20% respectively.

Following those with similar interests to you and liking their links is like waving a hello at other users, and hopefully they’ll follow you and like your content in return.

Find great content to share

Another use for StumbleUpon is using it to find shareable content for other social media channels. It’s now become my go-to site when I’m looking for something to Tweet, Google+ or post on Facebook.

I simply visit StumbleUpon, type in the category I’m interested in posting about, and am given a host of options and ideas to choose from.

It’s great!

Are there any downfalls to StumbleUpon?

The only downfall we really see to StumbleUpon is that users don’t seem to spend as long on our website compared to organic visitors. This is probably because they’ve come to our site randomly without a specific search, and if our post turns out to be something they’re not interested in then they leave quickly.

This can have a negative effect, within your statistics, on bounce rate and visitor duration.

However, we feel the benefits outweigh the negatives and we’ll be continuing to use StumbleUpon in the future.